Introduction

During the 1997-98 academic year a committee of 19 faculty, students, staff, alumni, and trustees met, consulted with members of the Carleton community, and prepared Carleton in the Twenty-First Century, a report whose intent was to provide an agenda for the College in the first decade of the 21^st century. When President Oden arrived in the summer of 2002, he initiated conversations and preliminary planning for the next capital campaign. In anticipation of the formal priority-setting phase of the campaign during the 2003-04 year, he asked Dean Shelby Boardman, who chaired the 21^st Century Committee, to reconvene the committee in order to bring its findings up to date. Fourteen members of the original committee, plus Dean for Budget and Planning Steve Kelly, met throughout spring term 2003 to prepare this report.

Our goal was to review the recommendations of the original report, note what we have achieved over the past five years, and identify what remains to be done. We also looked for emerging priorities and areas of concern that should be added and assessed whether any of our original recommendations should be dropped. In our report we have attempted to reflect as accurately as possible the current situation at Carleton and to identify areas that will require our attention in the coming years if we are to enhance our standing among the nation’s premier liberal arts colleges. We hope that our report will prove useful to the Campaign Priorities Committee (CPC). Although it was very tempting to imagine ourselves as a campaign committee, we resisted the urge to shape our recommendations as campaign priorities. As a consequence, not all of our findings have significant financial implications, and, therefore, are unlikely to find their way into the next campaign, but nevertheless should receive your careful attention.

In order to operate as efficiently as possible, committee members were re-assigned to the subcommittees they served on at the time we prepared the 1998 report. Each sub-committee then consulted with several key people on campus and prepared a draft update report which was presented to the full committee for discussion and modification. Technology, an area that received minimal attention in the first report, has emerged with a full analysis and a set of recommendations. Because of time constraints that made it impossible for us to meet with large numbers of Carleton students, faculty and staff, we chose to be rather inclusive in our recommendations and in the areas of interest and concern we identify; our primary objective was to make sure they came to the attention of the CPC.

As the CPC conducts its work next fall, it will undoubtedly reshape our recommendations and identify additional areas worthy of inclusion in the campaign. But we hope that the work we have done this past spring will provide the CPC with clarity about Carleton and help in determining the size and scope of the campaign.

Shelby Boardman
Dean of the College
Chair, 21st Century Committee

• Academic Programs and the Curriculum
• Admissions and Financial Aid
• Communication and Community
• Faculty and Staff
• Physical Environment
• Students and Student Life
• Technology